Topic
The botanical study of psychoactive plants and the people who use them.
The Chemistry and Pharmacology of Piper methysticum and Related Species
Alexander Shulgin's review of kava, Piper methysticum, covering Pacific preparation practices, pharmacological classification, and the chemistry of kavalactones and related Piper species.
A short Brazilian natural-products chemistry article confirming the double use of Virola theiodora bark in Yomanê hallucinogenic snuff and arrow poison from the Tototobi River region of Roraima.
The Chemistry and Pharmacology of Piper methysticum and Related Species
Alexander Shulgin's review of kava, Piper methysticum, covering Pacific preparation practices, pharmacological classification, and the chemistry of kavalactones and related Piper species.
A short Brazilian natural-products chemistry article confirming the double use of Virola theiodora bark in Yomanê hallucinogenic snuff and arrow poison from the Tototobi River region of Roraima.
RV 8.48 and 9.113 on soma, immortality, and light
Two selected Rigvedic hymns to Soma: RV 8.48, the famous hymn of drinking soma and becoming immortal, and RV 9.113, a Soma Pavamana hymn asking to be placed in deathless worlds of light, delight, and fulfilled desire.
Ritual architecture, psychoactive plants, sound, and authority in the Early Horizon Andes
A concise archaeological site entry on Chavin de Huantar as a ceremonial center where architecture, controlled movement, sound, San Pedro imagery, and direct evidence for vilca and Nicotiana snuff formed part of institutionalized ritual practice.
A high-Andean ritual bundle with direct chemical evidence for multiple psychoactive plants
A rock shelter in southwestern Bolivia where archaeologists found direct chemical evidence for ancient use of coca, harmine-bearing plants, DMT-bearing plants, and possibly psilocin.
A sixteenth-century Portuguese-Goan discussion of bangue, or bhang, describing cannabis preparations in South Asia, their relation to opium, and accounts of intoxication, appetite, laughter, sleep, and imaginative travel.
Sahagún’s Book 11 on herbs that intoxicate
Spanish entries from Book 11 of the Florentine Codex, the encyclopedia of Nahua life compiled by Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua scholars at Tlatelolco around 1577. They describe ololiuhqui, peyotl, tlapatl, mixitl, and teonanácatl, plants and mushrooms that cause intoxication or visions, with an English translation made for the archive.
Mushrooms, coronations, and the feast of revelations
Three passages from Diego Durán's Historia describing raw mountain mushrooms in Mexica royal ceremonial life: a coronation feast, Durán's note that mushrooms rather than wine appear as the chronicle's intoxicant, and Motecuhzoma's feast of revelations.
Chapter 14 of Francisco Ximénez's 1615 Spanish redaction of Hernández's natural history, describing ololiuhqui. Ximénez gives the plant's Nahuatl name cohuaxihuitl ('serpent herb'), its medicinal uses, and records that priests ate it to commune with the devil and see a thousand phantasms.
Colonial anti-idolatry texts on divination, healing, and visionary plants
A set of Spanish colonial anti-idolatry excerpts describing ololiuhqui and peyote as oracular substances used in healing, theft investigation, divination, and diagnosis of sorcery. The source preserves rare early descriptions of visionary plant practice while also showing how clerical authorities criminalized and demonized Indigenous ritual knowledge.
A Kamchatka note on mushroom trade and intoxication
Langsdorff's 1812 German voyage account records fly agaric in Koryak trade with Russians and Kamchadals, noting in a footnote that Koryaks preferred it to brandy as a stupefying or intoxicating substance.
Orinoco snuff, Acacia niopo, and curupa in an 1821 travel narrative
Humboldt and Bonpland's Personal Narrative describes niopo snuff among the Otomac on the Orinoco, including preparation from Acacia niopo, nasal apparatus, missionary testimony, and comparison with curupa.
A German travel account of Amazonian snuff, ceremony, and intoxication
Spix and Martius's 1831 German travel narrative describes paricá among the Mura, including preparation from dried seeds, ceremonial use, insufflation through tubes, and comparison with fly agaric intoxication.
Moreau de Tours on dawamesc, self-experiment, and experimental psychiatry
Selected passages from Moreau de Tours's 1845 psychiatric treatise on hashish, including his insistence on personal experience, description of dawamesc preparation and dosing, and claim that hashish offered a unique experimental route into the psychology of madness.
Ernst von Bibra's German comparative account of Amanita and Cannabis
Selective excerpts from Ernst von Bibra's 1855 German survey of narcotic Genussmittel, focused on fly agaric and hashish. The passages show a mid-century comparative framework linking Amanita, Cannabis, opium, alcohol, travel accounts, chemistry, and differential effects across persons and places.
An 1858 Ecuadorian account of ayahuasca visions and divination
Manuel Villavicencio's 1858 geography gives an early Spanish account of ayahuasca among Indigenous groups of eastern Ecuador, including divination, warfare, illness diagnosis, visionary effects, and a first-person report of his own experience.
Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World
One of seven chapters in a British mycologist's popular survey of the world's narcotics, this one on Amanita muscaria. Cooke gathers the earlier Siberian accounts of Krasheninnikov, Gmelin and Pallas, and describes the preparation, the staged effects, and the urine-drinking practice.
A French naval physician's 1865 travel account surveys Gabon's food plants and condiments, describing iboga as a stimulant and aphrodisiac used by paddlers on long canoe trips. He gives it the genus name 'taberna-ventricosa,' later corrected by Baillon.
Richard Spruce on ayahuasca, yopo/paricá, and Amazonian medicine-men
Richard Spruce's nineteenth-century account of caapi, aya-huasca, niopo, and paricá, based on field observations in the Uaupés, Orinoco, Rio Negro, Napo, and Pastasa regions. The excerpt records plant identifications, preparation methods, visual effects, ceremonial uses, and the role of payes in curing and divination.
An account of the Kiowa and Comanche peyote ceremony by ethnologist James Mooney, published in the Therapeutic Gazette in 1896. Drawing on field observation and participation since 1891, Mooney describes the all-night rite, dosages, and cases including his interpreter Paul Setkopti and leader Quanah Parker.
A Study of a Divine Plant
Havelock Ellis's account of his own peyote self-experiment, conducted on Good Friday 1897 in his London chambers. Written for a general scientific audience, it situates his diary of jewel-like visions within the clinical work of Prentiss, Morgan, and Weir Mitchell, alongside Indigenous religious use of the plant.
Safford, a USDA botanist, analyzes peyote's physiological effects and Native American ceremonial use in 1915. The article incorporates sworn testimony from Menominee, Omaha, and Winnebago members of the Sacred Peyote Society.
An essay by physician and ethnobotanist Blas Pablo Reko arguing against Safford's claim that teonanácatl was a fanciful name for peyote. Reko insists teonanácatl was a real mushroom still eaten by Indigenous communities in Oaxaca.
French physician P. Reinburg's account of his ayahuasca ingestion among the Záparo in May 1913, published in the Journal de la Société des Américanistes. Rather than visions, he experienced a severe toxic reaction with pulse loss, vomiting, and spasms, recorded in clinical detail.
A 1923 doctoral thesis reporting Fischer Cárdenas's isolation of the yagé alkaloid that Rafael Zerda Bayón had named telepathine (telepatina) decades earlier without isolating it. Seven case reports detail effects on human subjects, including the author's self-experiment, describing vivid dreams, visual hallucinations, and euphoria at low doses, followed by a systematic summary of physiological action.
Anthropologist Rafael Karsten's account of a Jívaro victory feast describes the natéma ceremony, in which the vision-inducing drink made from Banisteria caapi and tobacco is prepared ritually and drunk communally. The passage covers preparation, the emetic effect, and beliefs that the visions foretell prosperity.
Rouhier's two-part dossier for Bulletin des Sciences Pharmacologiques: a translation of Barriga Villalba's 1923 paper on alkaloid yagéine, followed by Rouhier's ethnographic and pharmacological notes. Rouhier catalogues dose-dependent effects and includes chemical analysis of a Jívaro preparation.
Berlin pharmacologist Louis Lewin announces his isolation of banisterine from Banisteria caapi and its identity to harmine. He describes animal experiments and preliminary human trials showing that banisterine relieved the muscular rigidity of encephalitis lethargica (post-influenza sleeping sickness).
The Narcotic Mushroom of the Aztecs
Schultes's botanical account of his 1938-39 fieldwork with Blas Pablo Reko among the Mazatec, tracing the teonanácatl rediscovery from Reko's 1923 letter through Robert Weitlaner's 1936 visit to Huautla de Jiménez. Schultes identifies the mushroom as Paneolus campanulatus var. sphinctrinus.
External source
The Narcotic Ololiuqui of the Aztecs
Schultes's botanical monograph settling the identity of ololiuqui, the Aztec morning-glory narcotic. He credits Urbina's 1897 identification as Rivea corymbosa, corrects Safford's 1915 misidentification as jimsonweed, and surveys continued ritual and medicinal use among the Chinantec, Mazatec, Mixtec, and Zapotec of Oaxaca.
The first scientific identification of Salvia divinorum, published in Harvard's Botanical Museum Leaflets. Wasson reports ingesting the Mazatec 'leaves of the Shepherdess' at two ceremonies in Oaxaca in 1961-62, attended on the second occasion by Albert Hofmann and his wife.
External source